Somehow, I feel it will be the otherway.. Apple is differentiated by its OS atleast. Samsung will feel the pressure of low cost highend Android smartphones.. coming from Google/Amazon/Chinese vendors and selling at 199-399

If you look at the notebook pc market with Apple/others... thats what it tells atleast.

Sure iPhone and Samsung providers are thriving. Tomorrow's market will be dominated by others, and those who provide for those are going to be tomorrow's winners. Renesas just couldn't wait for another brand to gain traction.

That is the main reason. The problem is not just the number of staff but the fact they have not had a great design win in the market. When that does not happen, market share stalls and revenue drops. That is the problem.

"Do you think it was Renesas' management that blew this whole thing, or it was inevitable because the global smartphone market so drastically shifted?"

Without a doubt, it was RMC management. The Apple/samsung duoploy in the smartphone market is blamed much. I mean, RMC couldnt find sockets in LG/HTC/Nokia/Motorola/huawei etc.... And even in the same market conditions, spreadtrum and mediatek thrived.

Secondly, I see a trend where someone grabs a market with a fresh technology (Google with MapReduce; Apple with iPhone/iPad) and competitors quickly respond by open sourcing a competing technology (eg Hadoop is open source MapReduce and Android-based Galaxy devices are open sourced iPhone/iPads), so there isn't even time for a number three technology to emerge.

In networking, a handful of companies including Nicera (acquired by EMC) were trying to move fast with a version of software-defined networking. Competitors saw this and created Open DayLight, an open source version of the same functionalty.

The dog-eat-dog business climate has morphed into a cut-em-off-at-the-knees environment.

Call me a hopeless romantic. Three years ago, when I was sitting in the same room at Renesas HQ in Tokyo with Mr. Akao, the then president of Renesas, talking about Renesas' future, I actually did believe that the Japanese company's acquisition of Nokia's modem business was a bold step, which might lead to something.

Do you think it was Renesas' management that blew this whole thing, or it was inevitable because the global smartphone market so drastically shifted?